As I was listening to one of Chloé Bloom‘s podcast (she is a French Youtuber & podcaster for those of you who are interested ; she speaks quietly & slowly so it could also be a great way to practice your French!), I realized that I had always mistaken two concepts : self-esteem & self-confidence. You too? Hmm, so we are two, my dear! Let me, according to Chloé’s definition, help you understand the major differences between the two & how knowing it can improve your life!
Self-confidence: a definition
Self-confidence is basically your ability to trust yourself and your skills. I think an example would be a great way to help you understand what I mean, so let’s do it. Knowing that if you lose your job, you will be able to find (or create) a new one is self-confidence. It is believing that you are able to do it again and again, no matter the outer circumstances, because you are confident in yourself. Thus, you are confident in the future.
Self-esteem: a definition
Self-esteem is pretty different. It is basically the value you believe you have. It is “how much” you are worth. Self-esteem is extremely dependent on your personal values. Why so? Simply because the more aligned you are with your values, the higher your self-esteem. Once more, let’s use and example: let’s say your number one value is “I never lie to friends, it is a thing I am so proud of”. If, the day after, you go and lie to a friend, no matter the reason, you are likely to feel like crap, right? It is because by lying to this friend, you have not been respectful to your value, and thus, you have not been respectful to yourself. Your level of self-esteem is actually all about your actions and how they show yourself to yourself. It is believing that you are either a “good” or a “bad” person according to your own values. It is giving a value to yourself.
How can I use these definitions to improve my life?
As you understood from the two definitions above, self-confidence works more or less the same way for everyone as we all have more or less trust in this or that skill. However, self-esteem is very different for everyone as it depends on your personal values and the things that really matter to you as an individual. Indeed, lying to friends may be really anecdotal to someone but terrible to you and thus, lying to your friend will make your self-esteem decrease drastically, but it won’t have the same effect at all on an other person.
Thus, now that you know the difference, there are two things you can do to make sure that you have both a great level of self-confidence and a great level of self-esteem:
- As far as self-confidence is concerned, improve the skills that are most important to you. Thus, you will trust yourself and know that no matter what the future holds, you will be able to face it because you will be there for yourself.
- As far as self-esteem is concerned, sit down and think about your core values (max. 3). You have them? Now, make peace with what you did that has not been “right” according to them as you can’t blame yourself for that: you did not even know then that these were your core values. Then, make sure that you always act according to these values from now on. Having great self-esteem is so much easier when you have a clear idea of what your values are in the beginning.
You may also like: 4 Words To Swear By. (Inspired by Carla’s post)
I hope you liked that post and it was somehow useful. For some of you, it may have been nothing more than reminders and commonsense but even for you guys, I think it was important to read this again. After all, is not it the purpose of reminders? I let you work on these two self-improvement categories. As you know, I am not a big fan of “mainstream” self-help content but I think self-confidence and self-esteem are two of the most important things in life. How do you want to succeed in any realm (or be aware that you “succeeded”) if you have neither self-confidence nor self-confidence? Bet on yourself, my dear, you are beyond important.
The English-speaking Frenchie 